Ask someone how his day went and you won’t get a fact-filled chronology. You’ll get an account supported by details culled from the trove of memories of the day’s events. The day was great because … The day was awful because … Like an editor snipping bits of reel, he’ll select the vignettes that produce a coherent narrative out of many possible stories. The resulting story is not foreordained by events but a creation influenced by a worldview, beliefs and assumptions, and blind spots. The same set of facts could just as easily be woven differently into an alternative, but no less true, version of the events of the day.
Stories help us make sense of the world. But even when factual, they contain the biases of the storyteller.
For the past several days I’ve been sifting through the narratives in the media regarding President Donald Trump’s decision to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program in six months. Created by President Barack Obama in 2012, the program allows individuals who entered the U.S. illegally as children to avoid deportation and legally work, study, and obtain a driver’s license. There are approximately 800,000 DACA participants, 17,000 in Colorado alone. The program is considered by critics to be an unconstitutional executive order. Congress now has six months to enact the program into law. I hope it will. That said, I wonder how anyone can independently arrive at an opinion regarding DACA given the pro-DACA media coverage.
It isn’t that journalists are reporting incorrect facts. Itap how they are arranging the facts to create a subtle narrative complete with protagonists and antagonists. A few examples: The Denver Post’s Wednesday coverage featured an evocative picture of several young women and their grandmother speaking passionately at a local protest on behalf of DACA. The story itself came from The Associated Press. Three paragraphs into the AP piece, the journalist states that “The president tried to have it both ways … .” Neutral observation? Not so much. Sounds like a judgment.
Like the AP piece, The Wall Street Journal’s coverage of DACA uses the word “Dreamer,” a term for illegal immigrants brought to the U.S. as children. While commonly used, the word has a distinctly positive connotation. The Wall Street Journal states that the president has “kill[ed] Obama-era policy.” Wouldn’t “sunset” be more accurate and less dramatic? At least The Wal Street Journal describes critics’ concerns for the constitutionality of DACA. The AP piece notes it at the end of the article and with a derisive tone more appropriate to an opinion piece.
National Public Radio’s coverage Wednesday was relatively fair, but a story days before on the impending DACA sunset featured interviews with sympathetic DACA participants and an utterly unsympathetic immigration critic. A Trump-supporting internet talk show host intoned in a deep drawl her antipathy for illegal immigration. She sounded like an idiot. I don’t think the reporters woke up that morning intending to reinforce listeners’ stereotypes of Trump supporters, immigration critics and Southerners, but they succeeded. Where did they find that person? No thoughtful DACA critic was available for an interview? Itap possible that the journalists don’t believe they exist.
How the story is told matters, including whatap included in the headline, who is quoted and who is not, word and picture choice, the order of the information in the article, and the placement of the story on the page or screen. Does the story more reflect the events or the journalistap interpretation?
We all have biases. Journalists are no different. But unlike a person recounting the highlights of his day, journalists have a professional duty to create stories that are as neutral as possible. Itap tough to do but essential to the credibility of the press and the dissemination of information in a democratic republic.
Krista Kafer is a Denver Post columnist. Follow her on Twitter:
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